Were the defendants using chicanery or proper civil procedure to avoid a $10 million verdict? A patient died hours after surgery from the anesthesia at the Laser Spine Institute. The decedent’s husband brought wrongful death and survival actions against the anesthesiologist, Laser Spine Institute, LLC, Laser Spine Institute Philadelphia, and Laser Spine Institute of Pennsylvania, LLC. Throughout the trial, all parties referred to those entities collectively as the “Laser Spine Institute”. The parties submitted their preferred verdict slips with the defendants listed as the anesthesiologist by name and “Laser Spine Institute”. The jury returned a multimillion-dollar plaintiff’s verdict. The plaintiff moved for delay damages. In response, and for the first time, the various Laser Spine entities claimed that the verdict was not against all of them collectively but instead against “Laser Spine Institute” alone. There is no such thing as “Laser Spine Institute”. Thus, if the defendants’ argument was successful, the verdict was void. The Pennsylvania Superior Court characterized the argument as a mere “quibble with the verdict slip’s use of their trade name” and pointed out that the defendants regularly referred to themselves at trial as a single entity of the “Laser Spine Industry”. As such, the Court affirmed the verdict.
